Im a practitioner in Incident, Problem and Change...therefore im not a novice at this ITIL stuff lol.

However....i dont know if it is my bad memory or something ive fabricated in my head But...are the service desk supposed to retain ownership of ALL incident?

I seem to remember that they do and it makes sense to me, however ive been looknig through white papers and cant find anything specific relating to this.

I have a situation where by our Service Desk pass on Incidents to other resolver groups and then just forget about them. Hence i now have huge amounts of incidents which havent been updated for some time. I want to flag this to their Team Leader and her boss however i want to make sure i have my facts straight first as i know she will claim that Incident Management should be responsible.

As you know, Service Desk is the function, and the major process they use is Incident management. The Service Desk IS responsible for owning Incidents throughout their lifecycle, until they agree closure with the user. This ownership includes progress-chasing, updating the user, escalation and closure verification._________________Liz Gallacher,
ITIL EXPERT
Accredited ITIL and ISO/IEC20000 Trainer and Consultant - Freelance

Why trying to prove your right with the evidence of "the world" (i.e. ITIL-best practice) when the evidence you need is on your doorstep. Lizz is right. However, you might just be in the position that formal ownership of incidents has never been established (by service desk nor by any other dept). Therefor: it is not so much you who needs to get his "facts" straight, but it is the organisation you are working with that needs to face the truth. Have they ever adressed the ownership issue in the past? If so, why is it not effective? If not: put it on management agenda. While ITIL as a best practice might assist you in convincing them to appoint an owner, it is merely a matter of common sense (and providing management with metrics from your organisation).

Service Desk is the function, and the major process they use is Incident management.

I would disagree with this as the definitive statement.
Service Desk is the process of management of the interaction with the user. Incident Management is the process of management of the incident.
Then:
Service Desk process is run by the Service Desk function and it may (or may not) create the incident to be managed by the Incident Management.

Going back to the initial question - just a pure core source:
SS, 4.4.1 says:
The common Service Desk functions include:
(...)
- making an initial assessment of request, attempting to resolve them or refer them to someone who can (...)

I hope this is what you were looking for._________________Krzysztof (Chris) Baczkiewicz
IT Standards Support
Eracent

I have always taught that the Service Desk does not own the Incident Management Process, but they do own the Incident Records. They may not define how Incident Management does its job through the multiple functional areas of IT the Incident may traverse, but they are responsible for "Managing request life-cycle, including closure" of all Incidents.

This puts the Service Desk in a unique position of being the functional IT group responsible for ensuring that the Incident Record does not get stalled during its life-cycle.

Many organizations have not delegated the authority to the Service Desk Management to ensure that Incident Records are followed up on. How many organizations allow the Service Desk Manager to tell the Server or Telecom groups that they aren't doing their jobs? But this is in fact the Service Desk's responsibility according to ITIL.

I have always taught that the Service Desk does not own the Incident Management Process, but they do own the Incident Records. They may not define how Incident Management does its job through the multiple functional areas of IT the Incident may traverse, but they are responsible for "Managing request life-cycle, including closure" of all Incidents.

Managing Request life-cycle, not the Incident Record life-cycle. Most of requests open the Incident Record, but it is not the same. Particularly we can have following situations:
- Request may not open the Incident,
- Request may open multiple Incidents,
- Incident may be opened without the Service Desk (e.g. by the monitoring tool)

I am getting a feeling that the understanding of the process is corrupted by the lack of proper tool. In most of tools (actually I don't know any that has the proper functionality in this subject) Incident Records are used as the SD Requests Records. This makes people think that it is how it should be.

Of course if the Request is to open the Incident, then the Request Tracking is actually the Incident Tracking. It is however viewed form 2 different perspective. SD sees it as the information related to the user, IM sees it as a job to do._________________Krzysztof (Chris) Baczkiewicz
IT Standards Support
Eracent

Checked the SS book to be sure.
It says that in most organizations the main role of the Service Desk process is the record and life-cycle management of Incidents. In 4.4.2 however it says directly about 3 types of Requests:
- Incident,
- Question,
- Change Request
leaving the list opened.

What does it give us in practice?

Different view on what we record and manage, and then how we do it. Having the possibility to differentiate the Incident and Request we may be able to gather information about the SD-User interaction separately from the information about the state of our service.

This is my humble understanding, so please argue if I am wrong _________________Krzysztof (Chris) Baczkiewicz
IT Standards Support
Eracent

I stand by my response that the Service Desk is responsible for the Incident Lifecycle. This would include ensuring that the ticket is acted on in a timely fashion, regardless of which functional IT group it is currently assigned.

If Incident management is in charge of managing the incident lifecycle , then somebody else should be in charge of controling the way it is done (good management practises call for execution and control activities to be handled by different entities).
In our case (ITIL context) the incident lifecycle, and especially the various delays -based on incident priority- escalation procedures, and so on should be part of the SLA. Therefore Service Level Management is in charge of controling that the agreed lyfecycles are followed._________________JP Gilles

The Service Desk is responsible for communication with users. If nobody cares for the Incident on users side then Service Desk doesn't need to care about it also.
But if the user calls a month later to ask about what is going on with the Incident, then the Service Desk has no excuse - The Service Desk is responsible for making the user happy. If then the Incident is created by Service Desk, then Service Desk is responsible to know exactly what is happening with the Incident.

Therefore I agree with jpgilles - Incident Management is the owner of the Incident, but The Service Desk should control it. In our situation, if the Incident is forgotten, then Service Desk is to be blamed.

I would say SLM is responsible for controlling both SD and IM._________________Krzysztof (Chris) Baczkiewicz
IT Standards Support
Eracent